HereComesTheSnow

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

&

Captain Fanilly Danbalion

A splash of dark liquid hit the soil, breaking the mournful silence that pervaded the funeral grounds as a taste of stout was shared with the dead. It was custom to honor those that passed ahead of you in this way the world over, at least in his experience— be it a mound marked only by a planted sword, high in the northern latitudes of Estival…

He glanced up at the elegant stonework, the same polished marble that raked the skies of the spikes of Aimlenn staring back at him, the silent vigil of the stone edifice mere months into however many countless centuries it would stand. Entombed here, with full honors as a Knight of the Iron Rose and no less, were the remains of Sir Rickert. Down here in Thaln, surely, the custom was hardly any different. The worst he could have done was perhaps not observing proper decorum as a member of the Order— but he had made his prayers to Lady Reon with the same priority of intent over ceremony for a long time, and her watchful eye had yet to blink— perhaps, in these ways, the world made concessions for your familiarity.

Gerard took a swig of his own, letting the roasted cacao notes coat his tongue as he quietly quirked a brow. Regarding familiarity, the truth was that he’d only really known the man below in passing, still very much a greenhorn to the Order even nowadays. Back then, it had only been a scant few that had deigned to try and pry the erstwhile mercenary out of his comfortable, quiet solitude; men like Rickert were welcoming enough that he’d made a fair impression, but at the same time they were perfectly content to live and let live.

They’d not spoken much. Likely less than three occasions total, before he was brutally cleft from the mortal coil by Jeremiah. The first sortie Gerard had seen with the Order had been Rickert’s last. For a moment, he wondered if such an offer as the one he’d poured would have been accepted if the man still lived…

A shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the head.

It didn’t matter. They had brought their blades to bear upon the same enemy, in the same battle, staking their lives for the cause. That had been enough for Gerard, long before his dreams of knighthood had ever remotely seemed like they were to ever be realized. Sharing a battle was sharing spilt blood, as good a reason as any to share spilt drink in the aftermath.

He had no reason to fear he was disrespecting the dead unduly. If anything, choosing Rickert’s grave to stop by had been a long time coming with all that in mind.

Ah—

She wasn’t alone this time.

Every week since he was interred, Fanilly had visited the gravesite. It seemed only right.

It was because of her that he was here in the first place. Even if it had been in the line of duty, Sir Rickert had still died under her orders.
The least she could do was this much. His family had already received support from the Order, so now all that was left was to pray for him over his grave.

And so, that is what Fanilly had been doing every week, usually at the mid-week. While it was not a proper religious teaching or doctrine, from a young age Fanilly had been told by her parents that both Sun and Moon were highest at the mid-week. Thus, it was the best time for your prayers to reach the Goddesses.

Perhaps it was just a simple principle told to a child to help her become used to regular ceremonies, or perhaps there was some merit. Either way, it was what formed the basis of Fanilly’s prayer for Sir Rickert.

But this time, she wasn’t alone.

“Captain.”

Sir Gerard had demonstrated his capabilities multiple times, particularly as he was among one of the four knights who had slain a gannek.

And now he stood before her, at Sir Rickert’s grave.

“Ah—”

The Knight-Captain cleared her throat.

“Sir Gerard, greetings.”

“Evening, ma’am.”

He’d heard her coming. By now, if he listened for the differences in cadence and pitch, he was beginning to learn how to identify his peers by the sound of their strides. Part of his ongoing efforts to cultivate a more active, observant mind— and just as much downwind of all he’d learned from his mercenary days, watching gait rather than listening for it. Her steps were light, careful, but in a certain way rigid. Different from the soldierly regimenting of his own, or Renar’s, or even Fionn’s— however much that one carried the rest of himself boisterous and easygoing.

He rose from the knee he’d taken in making his offerings, seeming to loom over that little leader of his even from afar. His golden eyes caught the last light that burned behind her, wolfish and measuring. A chance encounter, definitely, but… one that, much like visiting this knight he hadn’t known, was somewhat overdue.

It felt he barely knew his leader, too, though maybe not for lack of shared field experience. In a way, she seemed guarded, hard to take measure of beyond the capacity of her rank. The rank thrust upon her maybe only half a year ago, as dozens of memories featuring their departed Lioness were quick to remind him.

“Hardly a place I’d expected I’d meet you. What brings you this way?”

She had only held the position for a month or two before he had been accepted into their ranks. The deployment upon which the knight looking over the both of them from beyond had perished was also their first in this official capacity they now occupied. He’d previously accepted that it was beyond his calling to question the tradition, but facing the reality made it seem all the more prudent. Bluntly put, were she an employer and he a mercenary, every part of him would have rankled at the state of affairs being so unknown.

After all they’d been through together, too. It seemed a waste of that good blood the three of them had shed in eachothers’ names.

A blink later, and the mug, still a third full of the dark stout, was gently pushed into the gap between them, an offering to partake.

Fanilly’s eyes lingered on the grave, then on the mug, for a few moments. While she’d rarely drank anything particularly strong, in the span of a few more heartbeats she had reached out and gently taken the mug. Her tastebuds were greeted by the strong taste of alcohol she was unaccustomed to, as she suppressed the desire to wince. Her lack of familiarity with the beverage most certainly made it difficult for her to detect any other flavors.

But the solidarity was what mattered, here before the grave of the man who had died under her command.

“... It’s for Sir Rickert’s sake,” she responded, after taking a pause to recover, her blue gaze returning to the grave. Its solemn nature suited what she knew of the man interred beneath it.

“I was in command when he lost his life,” continued the knight-captain, eyes downcast and voice soft, “Even if he was performing his duty, it’s only right that I repay him…”

Fanilly trailed off. The rose symbol hanging from her neck made her intentions to pray for the fallen knight quite clear.

“---I suppose you must have had similar intentions, Sir Gerard?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the older knight huffed, a brow raised as he took the words in, turned them over in his head. Eventually, his gaze followed hers, casting itself again over the stone of the grave, sliding across name, date, memory. “Not so specifically him, as much as everyone under the banner that finds their way here.”

His eyes narrowed, just a hint. Behind the amber depths, a thousand battles flashed, countless names learned and forgotten blazing by. A deluge of red at the tip of the spear. So many of those same faces could have been him. Each one was no more or less favored by the Goddesses than he. For all he had accomplished beneath this new banner…

“I come by every now and again to remind myself that death holds no clemency for station, for tenure, or for risen standing.” He folded his arms, seemingly long at peace with the grim topic. “Nor achievement. It’s worth remembering each time you ride out could be your last. I owe it to those that have come before me to learn that lesson.”

He glanced her way, folding his arms.

“That our recent tutelage seems to have made me so much stronger than I was when I began this tradition only makes it more worth doing, I think. Even our mutual acquaintance from that time met his end on the field. How he did it was the stuff of legend, but his story ended just the same. As those who survived when men like Rickert fell, it’s our duty.”

A small smile, somewhere between wistful, wry, and wan, crossed his fangs. He cocked his head after a momentary pause, before offering a much more mundane angle to it all.

“It’s also just nice to have a place where I can sit with the dead, pay my respects with a little more time to breathe. Or, hell, pay them at all. In the free companies, attention is a rare privilege, remembrance rarer, and graves rarer still. We were on the move quite quickly— never more than a couple weeks away from the next dispatch.”

Fanilly had known of Sir Gerard’s past, in a company of mercenaries who exchanged lives for librans. It wasn’t as if she had been totally unaware of the details, of the implications. But the idea of the bodies of those who passed going unmourned, unburied, left without the rites to help them reach the Moon and Sun—

It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

The Knight-Captain’s blue gaze drifted from her knight, to the shape of the lamplighters carved on the tombstone that marked Sir Rickert’s grave. The young girls raised their candle-tipped staves, forming an arc over the inscription that bore his name.

“Even though they reach the next world, losing someone here is still painful,” she half-murmured to herself, before raising her head and turning to face Sir Gerard. Her early life was punctuated by two deaths: First, the death of her father’s pet highland griffin, the first one she had experienced directly. One day, she had been doing quite well, preening her feathers and accepting snacks as usual. The next, she had taken ill, and the next, she was gone.

The other had been the death of her grandmother on her mother’s side. They had never been particularly close, but she recalled the details of the procession bearing her corpse to its final resting place sharply at the conversation of the end.

In both cases, they had been seen to their rest.

But those who Sir Gerard had fought alongside—-

“... Then… then perhaps today’s prayer should be for your former comrades, as well?” Fanilly proposed, after a moment’s hesitation, “In case they are still lost, then a few words may help them find their way.”

“How considerate,” he smirked around the word, inclining his head all the same despite a quirk of the brow. As snickers at her expense went lately, his was hardly acrid. A light jab between the ribs, maybe an elbow to simply prod and annoy for half a second. “If you wish to, then go for it. I won’t stop you, but I have said what words I could, and made peace with the ones I couldn’t. More than some of those scoundrels deserved, to be blunt— I almost worry the folks interred here might take offense at being lumped in with their lot last minute.”

He chuckled, nevertheless dropping to one knee at the foot of the grave, and bringing his hands forward. He’d go without speaking his overtures to the goddesses this time— even putting aside that he tended to beseech Lady Reon alone most often, there was only so much their time in the dreaming world had done to tighten up his old habits in mind and body both. Gerard was well assured that the young girl beside him would be so much more precise with her words.

And, in saying that…

“Far be it from me to advise against giving the dead their due— but for those of us that live, you needn’t be so stiff, Ma’am. We’re off the field.”

The first point he wanted to test, while he had her here. Admittedly, he hadn’t framed it great, but he could start by getting that thought in her head. He bent his head low, and clasped his hands, falling silent after a soft invitation.

“Do lead though, please. I’m curious.”

“Ah, I… only those who are truly wicked in life cannot reach the sun and moon, so…”

Well, that cuts your list in half if I’m generous.

She trailed off, before sucking in a deep breath. Stiff? But she was the Knight-Captain of the Iron Roses. What else suited her position? She had to conduct herself formally, and with grace. Was anything else appropriate for the one who was carrying on the legacy of the vanished Saint Elionne?

Speaking of that legacy—

Despite her position, and the Iron Rose Knights’ history as a true holy order, Fanilly herself had never personally led a prayer. Her words had been between her and the Goddesses, not for the purpose of guiding others.

It was somewhat unfamiliar to her, but wasn’t this something she would have to do some day, regardless?

Besides, she was the one who had mentioned it in the first place. It was only right.

“Very well.”

Facing the gravestone, the girl clasped her hands tightly together and bowed her head, gently shutting her eyes. It took her only a few moments to find her words.

Fanilly’s lips parted.

“O Lady of the Moon. O Lady of the Sun. Please, may these words reach you.”

Her voice was soft, but firm. She had to make sure that the Goddesses could hear her.

“May your light shine upon those who have passed. Those whose lives ended long ago, and those who fell in nearer days.”

It was a simple prayer, one that in some form or another was uttered at the sites of sudden deaths. The words varied, but the meaning was always intact through them.

“May those who light the lamps guide their way, shining a path to your eternal paradise. Let the darkness be driven away, let no foul spirits stall their journey. May their days lead them to bliss, may their days lead them to peace.”

The sight of Sir Rickert’s fallen body re-emerged in Fanilly’s mind. A small knot, coiling in her chest for a few moments, had reformed.

“Please, hear these words, Lady Mayon, Lady Reon. So that those who have passed on find comfort.”

It was a plea on behalf of the fallen knight and on behalf of those she had never known, who had died years ago. If they still wandered, then Fanilly could only hope these words would serve to help guide them.

The knot had loosened. Her hands lowered.

For a time, there was only silence upon the wind that passed through the graves as the sun continued to creep low to the horizon. Gerard diligently observed it, allowing the sobering moment to linger with them. The Goddesses both heard ones’ words before they were even spoken, he had been taught, but it was the act of saying them that guided the wish a prayer carried towards their hearts, rather than be lost among all the world’s noise at their ears. Befitting this, it served one well not to distort the message by speaking too carelessly, or too quickly, while your own heart was still lingering upon that desire, that plea to the divine.

But, all such things, eventually, did pass. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her slight frame, still clasping her hands, still hunched over at the foot of the gravestone. There was a subtle cruelty to this, he knew well. Anyone with two thoughts to rub together in their skull could tease it out of the sight— a young girl, thrust into this mold at her birth, with only another gravestone, somewhere in here, to look to ahead of her on the path. Even with all the training in the world… the real thing weighed upon you more than you could really prepare for.

He knew that very well, even as a cog in the war machine. Even as someone that had the luxury of a choice in the matter. War and Death weighed heavy on old minds, let alone the young. And Command… Command was the heaviest of all mantles.

Finally, there was an easing of the quiet tension in her shoulders, and he let his voice free once more.

“Well said,” he began simply, inclining his head in a small, appreciative nod before seating himself cross-legged, turning to face her. His wolfish eyes seemed to study her for a moment, casting themselves along her bearing before settling on her eyes.

He spoke in a low, but level voice. A statement, not a question. An observation, not an interrogation.

“...Sir Rickert was the first beneath your command. You feel responsible, don’t you? More than you bargained for.”

That stiffness of hers had betrayed her, in the end. She’d spoken very well, firmness and sincerity coating every word… but towards the end, it was like her breath had drawn tight on her. After what they had been through, Gerard wasn’t keen on attributing that to a real fear of dark spirits.

The way she carried herself socially among her subordinates was fine to be left as an ongoing project, at the end of the day— no different from the ongoing project he himself was. There were far, far more important ways he and she seemed to be cast in opposition— though, thinking about, it was curious how many parallels the two of them ran in, if you squinted at it from the right angle.

“Am I wrong?”

Most of all, for what the two knights were… was their relationship with death. It was why Cyrus had been the one to mentor them both in the dream world, as far as Gerard was concerned. It was why they had met here, if fate ordained such.

“---Ah…”

The soft breath that left the Knight-Captain’s lips hung in the air for a few moments, slowly drifting downwards like a discarded feather.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, really. She hadn’t tried to make it so overt, but the mere fact she was here in the first place spoke of her feelings.

Fanilly opened her mouth and shut it once, as she tried to compile her thoughts, the knot in her chest tightening a little once more.

She had accepted by now that the possibility of death was within the duty of one of the Iron Rose Knights. They put their lives on the line for the sake of Thaln’s people, for the sake of justice.

That much was only natural.

And yet—

“... A part of me still wonders if I had been more prepared, or considered the possibility of a trap, he may still be here,” Fanilly said, softly, her gaze downcast.

It was her command, so ultimately the fact that her leadership led to Sir Rickert’s death could not be ignored, even if it were only in part.

That was why she had to come to his grave and do what she could. It was the only thing she could do for him, now.

“Idle wondering. A lingering pull.” he mused almost tonelessly, boring into her with his gaze. “Bringing you back here. Do these thoughts carry themselves with you onto deployment? That you’re missing something, somewhere? That he’s gone because you’re flawed in your judgement?”

He leaned forward, the approaching night a heavy, warding cowl over his shoulders.

“To put it another way:”

The wolf huffed, gazing down his snout, fangs yet to bare. Searching, searching, always searching— as cast from stone as the many statues that bore the cold wind blowing down upon them from the north.

“Do you think you can tame war, if you’re clever enough?”

“I…”

Fanilly hesitated.

Was that how she felt?

She wanted to approach the battlefield in a manner that would lead to victory, that would lead to defeating the enemy and sustaining as little damage as possible. She was hardly unique in that regard, of course, but it was nevertheless the goal she placed in front of herself every time she set foot into combat.

But did that mean that she thought she could tame the battlefield?

Fanilly’s right hand clutched into a fist at her breast, her gaze once more drifting towards the green grass.

If it were possible, then of course. She would want to ensure everything went exactly as planned, perfectly, without the slightest deviation.

However—

“... I… I don’t think it’s possible,” she half-murmured, “No matter how I might wish it were, I…”

The Knight-Captain sucked in a deep breath.

“Even the great Conqueror-King of Talderia didn’t believe he had perfect control of the battlefield, there’s no way I could claim that I do.”

He seemed to accept that, following her eyes to drink in the waning greenery in turn, watching the grasses slowly blacken as dusk slipped further and further away. Though his shoulders loosened, his voice held firm.

“Good. That’s a delusion you can never hold. Otherwise you’ll never escape this place.”

The grass’s blades danced with the breeze, almost imperceptible, like the waving banners and swords of a tiny, verdant legion. Wide blockades of men at march, their war cries a light scent upon the wind. In some way, it must have been how the Goddesses had looked upon the armies of their mortal realm, all its conflicts a trifle.

“It’s no beast. It falls under no yoke. Not yours as commander nor ours as soldiers. Not even the King’s. I would argue even the Goddesses would be hard pressed.”

He snatched some of the little green soldiers at his feet, lifting them and letting them fly from his fingertips. They would have no idea where they were going— only that they were gone.

“The field is a river.” he arrived at his analogy after some time. “You can plant seed in the plain and feed yourself if you know when it spills over. You can reach a new land by using a bridge that passes across it, but it’ll always be there, just under you. If you don’t mind your step, it’s where you end up, soaked to the bone. Or drowned.”

Apt for diplomacy and war, by his measure, but not the point. His brows narrowed.

“You can even influence its direction. Build along the banks. Bend it, dam it, create channels to expand it. But those are all done from the outside. From within… the current takes you.”

A deep, deep red, the last of a retreating day, painted blood over the western clouds.

“You can’t fight the rapids. You can’t control them. In the middle of it all, you’re at the river’s mercy. It will cut through stone itself. It will drown you, if you ever believe you’re completely safe. It’ll sweep you away and dash you on the rocks, if you ever stumble.”

Absently, his hands clenched around the hilt of an imagined blade. A grip hammered into him, his only rope to brace against the current.

“That is the path we walk in taking up the sword. Wading into chaos, with you at our head. You know as well as me, but it still bears saying—“

Beneath the hard-knot brow, he continued to glare into the middle distance, focus and steel behind his eyes. An expression that looked more at home on him than any other he wore.

“Every time we ride out, we know we might not come back. We might meet that same fate out there— cruel, merciless, unexpected, unpredictable. It’s our job to accept that and trust your judgement. It’s yours to trust that we do, and pass your best judgement along.”

It wasn’t necessarily new information. The tomes of strategy she had been instructed to read as a child were often quite explicit that there was no way to approach a battle with utter certainty to how it would progress. Even if the outcome was almost guaranteed, the progression of the battle and possible uncertain elements could never be taken for granted.

But hearing it spoken like this, by one of her knights, was still a new experience.

Fanilly’s gaze remained somewhat downcast, as she sucked in another deep breath.

“I hope, then, that I can make judgement worthy of trusting.”

It was a pervasive worry deeply-rooted within her mind, one that she could not so easily push aside.

“…Hope isn’t enough.”

The wind parted around the stone all through the graveyard, its currents split by each hard, unyielding face into shivering, fraying eddies. They tended to die out before they hit the next few yards, little more than whispering nudges against one’s frame.

“Hope is something outside of yourself. It can betray you. It can refuse you. It can skip out when you need it most. For many, it keeps them around far too long.”

Six years. Six years of vain, vain hope— Even having his answered, beyond anyone’s dreams, the hundreds of unmarked graves in his wake the two knights had shared a prayer for told their own stories. They were never far from a wise man’s mind.

“For many, it leaves too much out of their hands. As your Knights, we are the sword arm of your will as much as every ideal we uphold. If that will is ‘I hope this is right’…”

He paused, seeming to mull his words over as he regarded her sidelong.

“You’re going to lose more of us, you know. No matter what you come out of this chat believing, heeding or ignoring my advice— it’s inevitable. Fionn, Renar, Gertrude, even me. If we’re being honest, I’m more likely to go than anyone else. But the going will get tough. When it does, we’ll be looking to you to ferry us out of the maelstrom.”

More than anything else.

A leader had to keep everyone moving, out towards the other side. Any confusion they had about where to go would give the current room to tear the lot of their people apart. He’d seen it enough to know. And if there were thoughts that always took her back to this grave, then…

“That’s what it means to be Captain, Fanilly.” her name felt alien upon his tongue, but the gravity of the words held it in place. “You can’t doubt yourself, or the decisions you make. Least of all when it’s a mess like it was that first ride forth. If you aren’t confident… how can we be?”

“I…”

Fanilly trailed off. Hope… just putting faith in hope wasn’t right either, was it? Even if she had a more optimistic outlook on the concept, at the same time it was hard for her to find it in herself to deny what Sir Gerard had just said.

Hope on its own wasn’t enough, was it?

Fanilly’s gaze fell downwards again, her hands clutching at one another. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose anyone else if she could possibly help it. The great Conqueror-King of Talderia, the Minneria the Strategist, the Seer of Terios—All of them had conviction in their decisions, their conclusions. Be it in battle, or anything else.
Was that what had carried them forward, in spite of their inability to truly tame the battlefield?

Was that what she had to embody, even in spite of her own doubts?

—Did previous Captains ask this question of themselves?

Fanilly didn’t know. She’d long thought that those who filled this role prior to herself could never question themselves as much as she did.

But she didn’t know their minds, so it was a question that could not be answered.

But there was one thing she could do, no matter her doubt.

If nothing else—

“... I… I’ll do everything in my power to lead all of you to tomorrow, no matter the battlefield.”

—She could say that much.

A nod.

The sun slipped behind the horizon in full, leaving only its final rays behind as the threshold had been crossed. Lady Mayon arose opposite, surveying her domain through the gentle glow of the moon.

“That’s what we’ll have faith in, then. As you do us, in doing everything in our power to carry out your orders. Even sacrifice, should we have no other way through.”

The wolf rose again, glancing aside to the blue-white of the polished marble standing guard above their talk, seeming to capture the silvery filaments as they blanketed Aimlenn.

His gaze then followed the light upwards, towards the palace of the kindly shepherd, the shield to the weary, the weak, and the lost. Doubtless, the Moon Goddess had an eye on her ordained champion— another weight upon those slight shoulders of the Captain’s.

He huffed, a small, relenting puff through the snout.

“The night’s coming in,” the taller knight intoned as he turned towards the gates, towards the retreating sunlight. “I’d best get going— I’ve paid what respects I’m able with prayer. Best I not keep you from the rest of yours.”

One step forward. Then two, then three.

In his desire to take her measure as his commander, he had come across a few confirmed suspicions. That her mantle was as heavy as he’d imagined, that she was prone to agonizing over mistakes, the way all greenhorns did, that her schooling, however quality, could only prepare her so much for the real mass of this undertaking, thrust upon her.

She was rigid. Distant from her troops. Prone to flustering. To getting herself into trouble. And so shackled by doubt. Only an old tradition would put a young woman like her in such impossible shoes to fill. To choose a Commander like this flew in the face of all the hard-earned reasoning a mind like Gerard’s could muster.

A total washout.

He stopped, five or six good paces away, and thought for a moment, before looking back over his shoulder one final time.

“…Take this for what solace it’s worth, Captain.”

Even so.

“I was younger than you when I took up the sword. I never reached a position of leadership in that time— I’ve always stayed on the front. There are many parts of this I don’t understand. Little diligences that are simply beyond me.”

Even so, all that said.

“In that time, since I left that little wide-eyed know-nothing farmboy behind… these six months have been the cleanest. Rookies or otherwise. That’s worth a little faith you’re running the place on the right track.”

—The cleanest.

Despite everything, despite her shortcomings, her doubts—

Despite all of that.

Those words managed to reach deeply into her being.

Even though she could never live up to the Captains who came before her, she could never live up to Saint Elionne herself.

Sir Gerard had said those words to her.

“I—”

Fanilly faltered. It was hard to grasp that such a thing was possible. Even in the dark dealings of the sort of mercenary company that Sir Gerard had once been a part of, the brutality and cheap death that she could only imagine, never to touch—

She managed to give her knights the cleanest six months he had ever experienced.

“I—”

What did she say to that? Was this the sort of faith the past Captains had received from their knights?

How could she keep living up to such an ideal?

—No, it wasn’t how, was it?

She had to try. She had to do it. For the sake of all of her knights.

Wasn’t that what this was all about?

“---I… I won’t betray that faith, Sir Gerard.”

A firmness found its way into Fanilly’s voice, even if only for a moment, her hand clutched over her heart.

“You have my word.”

As Captain of the Iron Rose Knights, that was the only path forward.

He was silent for a moment more, then…

“And you mine. We’ll hold eachother to that.”

… He turned away, accepting whatever he saw in her burning twilight gaze for what it was. The sound of fine gravel shifting between leather boots sounded again, as he started off towards Candaeln anew. Towards their home.

A hand rose as he left, waving a stolid goodbye once, then twice.

“Be seeing you, Ma’am.”

“And I, you, Sir Gerard.”

It wasn’t that this had assuaged her self-doubt—

But Fanilly couldn’t allow herself to let her knights down.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

”I trust if that ever changes, you'll be the first to let me know. At the end of your knife or otherwise.”

No more needed saying between them, the rest carried through in the cold standoff between their respective bearings. Asakura Chisato and Rudolf Shilage held no friendfship between them that might bridge this gap, the way the others could, but within that same distance...

He nodded, curt and slight enough that it could be mistaken for a simple shift in posture. Of all the people that came out of this speaking sense... He was a little surprised it was her. Maybe expressing an actual like or dislike was akin to an outburst of disgust, or maybe she was just far enough and cold enough to have no qualms about trying to ameliorate a ranting comrade—

But all the same, it brought a strange sense of satisfaction, hearing that at least that unfriendly and stiff shinobi agreed with him. She didn't like it. That was good.

That was correct.

Recognizing he had leveraged the consequences out into as good a furthering of their common goal as he could, as the others had been sure to note, was one thing. He could accept that his desperate efforts were recognized for what they were... But brushing off the act as a whole had never struck a chord that sounded sane in him.

It was strange. In the back of his head, he knew it was strange, this interplay of distaste and tension... but it felt like the way things should be.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

”Things came up between then and now if you’ll recall. Anyway. Now that I’ve proper harness, my health is as assured as it realistically can be in these circumstances.” Rudolf replied, laying a hand to rest atop his greathelm as he addressed Elaine’s chief concern. ”But I’ll need to play things smart going forward, if Reisa was any indication— my senses are still a little dulled, and after Leviathan’s near-disaster, my eyes and my body are still moving slower. Drana Asnaeu took me in a bad direction wholesale.”

He rolled his eyes. “Lose its effect”. Everything a performance to this guy, was it?

”You want me to spill, don’t begrudge me the splash, SEED. If they trained you right you’d know how this works. Depersonalizing’s for you guys, not me. Now, is that all?”

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

"So many things." he replied, nodding gratefully and taking a pull from the offered wineskin, letting the warming sweetness cascade down the back of his throat before staring into the blaze once more. "And so little of them what they had hoped I would. Add that to the list, Miina: I'm a terrible student. If we were there longer than a night, you'd have heard Cadmon talk up a storm about the thorn I am in his side." he joked sardonically, before passing the wineskin over his shoulder towards her. She did like her drink— surely that would help serve as an apology for earlier.

He sighed, the catching between his nose and soft palate a little— in that specific, fricative way that managed to stretch an "h" sound.

"Regarding control... the chance is low. Lower now than ever, given how deep I've had to go down the well to get any pull— he and I are intertwined enough that there shouldn't be too much chance either of us screw up the way I did with Otto. But, in that same vein: I know it's never zero. And with that demon from earlier openly manifesting now, which I am assured should never be possible, I worry I may be walking into a relitigation of the terms if before I know it. I was all the way down to burning blood against Reisa. That's not a good place to be when taking out a loan."

A twitch of the eye hit him for a fraction of a second, when the matter of hiding it from everyone came up. He hid it behind a wry smirk quickly, though, and shot back.

"And I don't know, Sir Galahad, true as that may be I'd wager my position's the same too— whatever shame we all hold close to our chests, attempted fratricide by way of primordial darkness is going to be a tough one to beat. Everyone here loves their families, last I checked."

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Okay, point, but...

He raised an eyebrow, remarkably calm in the wake of his oversight staring him in the face like he was an idiot.

"I thought you meant properly properly. I was under the impression you're essentially reverse-engineering things through feeling and observation, not rigorous study. To be blunt, I figured half the reason you brought it up was because you'd also be in the market for contact with a specialist— But... Sure. If I ever suddenly run into a wellspring of untapped potential to turn myself into more of a walking bonfire, I'll keep you in mind if you're really that confident."

All told, there was an undercurrent of sincerity in that glib rejoinder, if you listened for it. It seemed she really had slipped his mind, be it from the differences between Black and Red mages, her not exactly fitting the dismal image he was describing when shooting the idea down, or whatever else.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Miina...

Well. He supposed her focusing more on the technical aspects of what he had become was a given. They had already done this, in part, once before while he was stuck mummified beneath a mountain of medicinal bandaging. She was already pretty out of sync with the societal norms he had once believed basically universal, and short of seeking out her missing brother, or...

Let her off, Rudi.

... It seemed the finer details of magic, that she had been pulling out of the aether from first principles for so long, had held the lion's share of her interest in the time they had been traveling together. He had a feeling proper schooling would put her over the moon, were it realistically available.

He closed his eyes, letting his mind's eye proliferate through the nerves of his body, focusing on feeling.

"...No." he intoned after a moment in response. "Not unless it's a situation like the last battle of Drana Asnaeu, where that aethereal essence, is basically stitching me together from the inside."

One eye opened.

"Other than that, it's just kind of heavy—"

The brow above it rose, and though his stoic mask didn't leave the features of his face, he did lean away from the diminutive Mystrel as she seemed to have all but teleported right on top of him, the golden irises catching the firelight and seeming to glow as they scanned his frame, as if trying to peel back his outer layers to reveal the meat inside, as if on a hunt— however benign her intent might have been,. he couldn't help but be reminded of the very first sabertooth he'd slain, who had been stalking him even as he stalked it, whose fang had forged the knife at his hip.

He scooted away, a small shuffle of the hips.

"No, I haven't. Unless I've missed something, I still have no innate ability to weave aether the way you, Neve, or Eve do— Everything is downstream of the contract. Were it to be severed, I would go back to the days where I had materia, and materia alone."

The profaned swordsman frowned, glancing towards Galahad before meeting her eyes again.

"Additionally, Black Magic is going to be hard to track down from here on out. I don't know whether the proliferation of white mages has changed attitudes in Drana Asnaeu— given how my mother reacted to all this I doubt it's much different— but naturalborn mages are shunned if they're lucky, on the rest of the continent. Hunted if they aren't. Black Mages most of all. What society wouldn't fear somebody that can do... What Eve did, for example. Tampering with the aether the Mothercrystal has allotted for the world to produce such an unholy firestorm that not even Valheim's airships could withstand it? You would always be looking over your shoulder, praying they don't decide they want to take that power and call themselves King with it."

Another crackle from within the flames, as if punctuating the argument.

"Galahad and his fellows hunt dragons to protect Midgar from them. A proud, specialized warrior tradition, going back hundreds of years, if not millennia— but what happens if a dragon can take the form of a man, and walk right inside the walls, where a bunch of unsuspecting normal humans are there to be burned? That's how black magic is seen— volatile, untrustworthy, destruction itself wrapped up in a person. Even if I could manage magic... anyone that would be able to teach it to me would keep themselves very, very hidden. I appreciate what you're trying to get at, but I doubt it's in the cards."

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

For his part, Rudolf had quietly collapsed into an almost-unstructured pile once they made camp, his cold granite edifice of a helmet at his side as his hands steepled at the front of his burn-scarred brow. Even knowing that the explanation he had almost courageously launched into was long overdue for revisiting, now that the treacherous ruins were well behind, the concern seemed almost a world away thanks to that singular, horrifying word that had slotted into Ferdiad's closing remarks:

"Patron."

Why "Patron"? What could he have possibly meant when he'd said "patron?!" Imir? Had the goddess who watched over the lost and forlorn have found it within herself to not only accept a blasphemous reprobate like himself, but the whole civilization and the vengeful, amoral ghosts it had left behind? Was Lunaris's vaunted moon goddess still out there, lurking in the shadows, awaiting to overthrow Etro's hegemony and replace the Mothercrystal's light with her own?! Had Valheim somehow found a way to worm its claws so deep even into the furthest corners of Edren?

No matter how many of his personal pet theories he cycled through, cobbled together from his own dabbling in archaeological studies or gleaned in armed escort of true professionals in the field, the result was the same— in the face of such an unprecedented development as the shades of Lunaris manifesting corporeal form, he was at a total loss. And what was more...

Hey. What the hell kind of "patron" do you have lurking down there?

...

Even when he tried to accost the second voice in his head for that context he was missing, only silence met him in return. His passenger had been quite thoroughly spooked, or otherwise convinced to clam up as they had in Drana Asnaeu— once Ferdiad had gotten too close to Rudi, and began sniffing out that "familiarity" he'd kept mentioning, it was damn near curtains for any measure of context on the matter. The only token point of direction left to him was the sense that, at the very bottom of their interwoven ties, the spirit was also spinning away at the problem, trying to make sense of all the things it had pointed out were very, very wrong with what they'd survived.

So given this abandonment, the young warrior was left only with his own devices to work out what the hell had just happened to them all, his own inferences from the piecemeal image of the ruins that multiple millennia after the fact left you with.

It almost came as a relief, Izayoi's harsh tone bidding him away from his newest spiral of uncertainty and back to the revelations he had been so close to finally making.

"No," he muttered plaintively, a wry thing between a smirk and a scowl nestling itself onto the delicate features of his face, so unlike his pedigree. "I'd like to never have shown the lot of you anything, and for you all to think me a run-of-the-mill swordman forever."

The words tasted bitter as they flew off his tongue, the barest edges of a chuckle tilting them askew. Like his lungs were choking with ash again, his chest felt tight, his heart seeming to thud against it, a cold sweat upon his skin. That was the most damning part of all this. No matter how hard he worked to build himself up to the task, however many reminders his conscious mind fed itself of how far he had already come———

He felt that same, stubborn impulse clawing at his heart. A spooked bird in a storm, wanting for all the world to bolt into the night as he willed himself to pay the piper. Cowardice, still living in his bones.

His brow then furrowed, and his gaze left the rest of the group, settling somewhere in the middle distance.

"But 'like' has left the picture a long time ago. I’ve kept everybody waiting long enough twice over."

He took a long, deep breath, bracing his core to stop the quivering in his soul. One hand broke the steeple in half, holding the palm out and flooding itself with an attempt to produce the accursed flame. His gaze hardened further. The scents of camp filled his lungs, the smoke of the fire, the herbs of the stew, the warm blanket of flatbread. He was, naturally, the furthest away from all these heartening things— he had parked himself upon a stump framed by the shadows of two high, old hawthorns. They seemed to grow deep and bold as they draped his head and torso in gloom, masking his features save for what caught firelight.

He let the breath loose. No black flames greeted him. So much for a visual aid. Fine.

He crushed the thought, and used the hand to slick his hair back, it and the sweat on his brow forced away from his eyes as he met the expectant stares of the party.

---

Rudolf Shilage

---

"Let's get into it, then. I surmise some of you have already put most of this together, between the way I've been acting and the events of the past few days. From where I'm standing, at least, the whims of fate have already laid out enough of the hints. If you think you have the basic gist of it, we can probably both assume you're right."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His gaze flickered between the faces before him— first to Galahad, who had hunted him down for his many withheld truths the longest. By all accounts, he had held to his words, that night in the forest when Rudolf had finally broke. He hadn't told anyone else.

"I'll start with laying out the obvious: Rudolf Shilage is weak. He is craven. He is dishonest. He is weak. Too weak to stand and meet expectations, too weak to hold faith that he can do anything on his own, too weak to face a fundamental truth if it's painful. That is how I am, and that is how I've always been. A dim spot on the family name, ever since an illness tried to take me in the cradle. I lagged in my study, I lagged in my training, there was no part of being the second son of a knightly house that I didn't make into a struggle."

They flashed to Esben next. His oldest companion, here from before the very beginning. He, surely, had always known Rudolf was lying. Good liars, the kind that became accomplished SEED Infiltrators, knew all the tells. They knew how to spot dishonesty while it was still brewing in your head. It was how they had learned to iron them out. Esben had skipped that first step. He had the ability to sniff out the truth while always telling it. It wasn't even remotely fair.

"So, naturally, knowing this fundamental truth of who I am began to grind me down. For fourteen years I'd lived with it, and despite every effort I had made to the contrary, I could never really get over feeling powerless. Runt of the litter, unable to save himself from loss after loss." He dismissively waved his hand. "Spinning my wheels without end, and watching the world I was living in pass me by. Before I knew it, the call to war had come knocking, and I wasn't up to par. Rather than joining my father and brother on deployment, I ended up being sent here, to Lunaris, to further my studies and training until I might one day become useful."

To Chisato, who had narrowly missed his being there by a couple of months. Maybe sooner, depending on how quickly she had been thrown behind enemy lines to swipe enemy bargaining chips. With how fast the Shilage Cavalry liked to move, and how stubborn Rudolf had been about accepting being sent away, it wasn't the biggest stretch of the imagination that Izayoi might have known of one of her approaching enemies quickly— quick enough that the little hare was already inside Edren when Rudolf had finally been convinced to go study on the other end of the country.

"As it happens, I was no swifter a learner or bloomer there than I was at home. The breadth of my mind may have expanded, but the depth of my ability was still a shallow puddle. I grew sick of myself. Sick of knowing that I would, inevitably, have nothing to show for all those that placed their sincere hope that I would finally get it all together. That I might become somebody to be proud of. Not at Castle Demet, not at Sagramore Village, nowhere did I see any breakthrough. Anything to pull me out of the pit, as I kept despairing, kept losing, kept failing. I always trend down. So down I ended up going. Into the deepest, darkest pit I could find, where the gods could no longer remind me of their 'cruel ambivalence'."

He spat the words out, clearly disgusted with his own thoughts, as he slid his gaze to Izayoi now. Izayoi. She had terrified him for so long. Existed in his head as a demon, to twist his skull from the spine and drink the marrow from his still-wet bones. Surely, even after knowing her, breaking bread with her, and sharing the road with her, that fear had somewhat quelled— even if it still flared to life, however briefly, when he met her steely, demanding gaze. In a way, this had started with her. When he had first, in the heat of the moment, decided that her life that terrified him was worth more than his safe, comfortable masquerade. All to try and not let somebody he knew down, one more time.

"That lead me to those ruins. A great place to get away from everything that hurts, really. Stony, gloomy, dead, silent. If you want to be alone to wallow in your disillusionment, Old Lunaris has you covered. If a dozen guiding hands can't help you, to the point where they begin to fall away, you may as try camping out in isolation before you trudge home to deliver the bad news to a returning war party." There was a snap, as the firewood split somewhere in the middle of the blaze. "Only you're never alone there. There's always a taunting voice, beckoning you down, below the earth, towards a chance to rewrite the rules, to take the rails you're stuck on out from under you. It's at the edge of your hearing. You think it might just be your mind playing tricks on you at first. Like you're just jumping at shadows. But as we all saw— the shadows are jumping too. It's all too real. More real than ever, apparently."

To Miina, to whom he owed more explanation than anyone else here, if only in that he had promised she'd get it when they came. It was hard to read her through the cloak of shyness, stuttering words, and fraying nerves, but she was the only naturalborn mage here— he doubted that she hadn't felt the similarities between Ferdiad's essence, and every big expression of the blackflame Rudolf had brought into the world. With the time they had taken to put the ruins behind them once the demonic jester had scurried off, he was sure that her arcane intuition had ample time to put the requisite pieces together.

"Your senses," he began, each word heavy and final, impossible to catch and stuff away once they had dropped from him. He looked between her and the two points of light orbiting Esben, a green and purple duo that had pinch-hit for his dumber ideas almost as much as the Red Mage had. They were part of the team too. "Don't lie to you. That clown's aether and my own are of the same kind. Demons, the vengeful ghosts of the Lunarian Empire that vanished in a single night. When my faith in the Gods bottomed out, I followed those voices down into the abyss. Into the shadows, until..."

The briefest glance to Eliane. In truth, there seemed nobody in the world less concerned with what was going on regarding Rudolf's unholy bent and insincerity as her— she was always, simply, assured that he was working towards the same goal as her, and that it was enough that he contributed to her eventual victory, for the glory of Skael. He wished he had that in himself. For all he weaselishly grumbled in his own mind about the way she wielded that self-assurance, it was also true that he wished he could be more like her, in that simple, pure way.

He stared into his palm again, his expression a stony, austere knot. Tight around the eyes, mouth a hard, dispassionate line, he would throttle that little fool if he could ever walk back to that moment of nadir and undo this mess he'd made of his future. But the depths had taken it from him. He had given it away. With that same upturned hand, he had held out his soul, his life, and his fate. He had been a beggar. A servant. A knight swearing fealty. A vagrant accepting alms. A man at the end of his rope, making a payment in quiet desperation. All of these. None of them.

There it was again. That knot in the gut, like they had all stabbed him while he had weaved his whinging tale.

"I forged a contract with the demon that now resides within me. They are not manifest the way Ferdiad is, but they are the source of the black fire that stains my sword, my armor, and my aether. I burn away at the luck that was ordained to me and house its soul upon my own, our essence intertwined. In exchange for my ties to Mother Etro's will, I gained the power to do what you all have seen me do. Obviously, right?" A rueful chuckle came as he shook his head. "It's not through any mundane means that a reedy half-rate son of cavalry raiders can summon a barrier strong enough to withstand a blow from Izayoi's teacher wielding the greatest blade Kurogane produced, or that he can put a spear through the scales of Leviathan, or that he throws around Black Magic so primordial it can structurally break down Materia for greater effect at the cost of rendering it inert, or that he could throw a ball of clinging black fire into his own brother's face because he's mad he's still the nail and not the hammer and he thinks nothing's changed."

Without realizing it, the bitter, loathsome tone in his voice had grown stronger, fiercer, rawer, until he was all but shouting his final words. His veins throbbed behind his skin, and the burns felt newly hot, remembering the fire he had forced through his eyes when he began to use his own blood as fuel. One breath, shaking, quivering. A second, likely saving him from spewing his guts out right in front of dinner. A third...

And he grew still.

"That's why I was warning you all away from paying anything in there any heed. I made that mistake already, and now I am a walking totem of ill omen. Right down to the fibers of my being. That's the dramatic way of saying it— the plainer way is that you've all been trusting a craven idiot with your lives, the whole way through."

He regarded the group as a whole hollowly. At this point, he would live with whatever they made of this— if Galahad were any indication, it just as well might have ended up that the most foolish part he had played in it all was of the man too scared to tell the truth. If that was he case, he gave up. If they reacted the way he'd feared, and excised him from the group, he could accept that too. It didn't really matter, did it? He'd finally put it out into the open. He had cast another die, the way he had when he first forged the pact, when he had first accepted the redirected call to action, when he had first revealed that something was very, very wrong with him.

If he had come up snake eyes on all of them, so be it. What was done was done. He had boiled the whole thing down, only leaving the complete basics.

"I turned my back on the light we're now fighting to save because I was a scared, hurt child, looking to appease my own ego. There's no justification at the end of this. I wanted to feel like I could win. There's no misunderstood or misapplied noble intent. I wanted to tell the way of the world to go to hell if it kept letting me lose. Just a stupid boy with a stupid decision made for the stupidest reasons. I'm not asking any of you to pity me. Don't get it twisted. I'm not a victim. I made my bed and I've been lying in it for five years. This isn't about any reconciliation or sympathy. It's about getting this useless lie off my back. I was selfish then, I was selfish when I told you all to believe I was just some bum from a swordsman village, and I'm being selfish now."

He barely registered his own words, but out they came. Was this catharsis? He hadn't felt much when he had first told Galahad most of the story. He'd chalked it up to the Knight-Dragoon's acceptance and reassurance, in hindsight a practical choice to keep an able sword arm around when he had lost so many in the span of a week. But maybe this empty feeling was that 'lightness' he'd always heard it described as. Maybe the weight coming off his shoulders had only revealed a fine, unrecognizable powder beneath, this lie a grindstone for the fragments of his life that he had hid beneath it. What else could possibly be under there, at this point?

"What else. As far as I'm aware, the clown manifesting the way he did is a very recent development." he dully explained, noting Izayoi's other demand from their skirmish near the Pillar. "My passenger knew of him previously, though they were adamant that any of them popping up and putting claws to our necks was on the same tier as waking up next to a river and having a face-to-face chat with Danube herself. It was the whole reason they took residence as a shadow overlaid onto my soul. And I suspect their taking my luck as payment for these ill-gotten gains has something to do with it too— luck is the Divine ordaining the flow of the world. Black Magic is rooted in destruction. Like we discussed, I'm not a 'proper' mage. I can make vague guesses and associations, and I was really hoping I'd be able to confront all this with more answers than I have."

He wiped his hand against the red of his armor's tabard. He had drawn blood when his fury spiked a few paragraphs ago.

"But as whatever's even left of my luck has it, I've now got more questions."

He sat back, pressing his spine into the trunk of the nearer tree. His arms folded across his chest, and he looked up, away from everyone, towards the moon as it hung in the sky overhead. The nightfolk, they were sometimes called, so venerated that thing...

"I imagine there's also some you all have that I've missed while indulging in writing my little autobiography. Go ahead and hit me. Do your worst. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that I just love talking. Let's break it all down while we have the time. Once we hit the border, I imagine more immediate deceit's going to take the stage from me."

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

"Boy".

Rudolf grit his teeth, as Izayoi made her frustrations known and the word crossed his ears. It was hardly the first time she'd used the dismissive appellation for him, or similar towards anyone else for that matter, of course. Her gruff manner of speech and referral was something even a callow-hearted, sensitive little runt like him had gotten used to, somewhere between Atsu and the raid upon Mizutani's manse. In fact, he was sure he'd brushed it off a dozen times between all the little moments of their travels in just the past week— idle encounters while stuck on a boat at sea, setting camp while on foot, or pointing eachother towards where they'd last seen another of their unit.

But something about it struck him wrong, this time. Something contextual, it must have been— Because it was here, or because it was about this shit— he couldn't place it exactly. He just knew who it reminded him of, and that it made him want to snarl. So, given that they were now neck deep in a fight, stuck trying to get a demon the hell off their back the way he should have been the last time he was around here—¹

"That—"

Snarl he did, planting a sabaton into the earth and vaulting over the waves of shadow.

"Was—"

As he landed, a dome of darkness fell over them all, casting the battlefield in midnight umbra. His eyes adjusted quick enough— quicker than he remembered them ever doing beforehand— but the enshrouded steel of his armor still almost seemed to melt away into shadows, leaving only streaks of blood red and the soft glint of his blades to mark his movement. But more importantly than his—

His eyes scrambled as Ferdiad's form vanished behind the gloomy veil, alight behind his greathelm as he desperately searched the void for movement. It was the very edges of his perception, almost there to read and not guess at, the swirling eddies and shifts within the darkened aether— the feeling of having motion pass just outside your peripheral vision. You couldn't see it, you couldn't track it, but you could feel something happening—

The aether's pooling again, boy.² He's going to pop up in a moment. Miina and Chisato are your VIPs. Clown going after the two that look like kids, this fits.

But fortunately, he had a more skilled hand at this on the job.

He kicked off, flying through the night, surging forth through the gap between the two, and bringing both blades to bear—!

"The plan!" he growled, capping his response with a shower of orange sparks and the ring of steel against steel as the Crane Wings met the reappearing Ferdiad's claws and scythe, checking their arcs before either could get up to speed and rip into his two smaller compatriots. It was a closer-run thing than he would have liked. The weight of the armor, even with darkness embedded between the gaps of its structure, wasn't the issue— but even having enough forewarning to be moving in place during that half-second of confusion still left him getting there in, as far as he was concerned, the nick of time.

Margins nobody should accept living in.³

"Going after little girls part of your act too?" he jeered through grit teeth, driving as much power as he could through sturdy legs and back to hold the demon at bay. "Pathetic. Nobody likes a creative who plays it too safe!"

A surge of force, as he finally wrenched his body through the swing and knocked the attacks aside, whirling into his own counteroffensive by slamming a boot in the demon's gut. Like the Wild Dance before him, his swords then blurred as he brought across a series of paired and sequenced hews into the space between himself and Ferdiad, aiming to make the most of this small moment of tempo his interception had gained—

And buy the rest the window they needed to keep pounding this thing back into the depths it belonged to.

---

---

• _{1. The widow you're whinging at would have died without me. I'm never gonna let you forget.}
• _{2. I'm evil. I enjoy triggering "sensitive young men". It brings me great joy, knowing that you've willingly broadcast a sore point for me to poke at. What do you expect?}
• _{3. Since he's correctly deducing the fault here lies with him, I'll let him off, but if we want to bring up "unacceptable margins": Get Me. The Hell. Away From This Screeching Chimpanzee. I'm pretty well embedded into this armor, and if there's a chance of him smelling me on you in the middle of this, let's just say I may have discovered the cure for gambling addictions— I don't want to take it. I want somebody to teach Miina Holy, or for Esben to reveal he still has the Cid-summoning crystal.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

Hn.

"Grew up well enough", huh?

Rudolf's nostrils puffed as he rubbed at the ear the redheaded goliath a seat down had flicked, but he said no more after his questions received their answer, popping the cube of potato into his mouth and chewing the whole thing over. Give the others their space to ask what they need, once the big picture concerns were as addressed as they ever would be. The roast vegetable was wonderfully-seasoned, a light coating of spices cutting through the rich butter that dressed it, but the words tasted too bitter on his tongue.

I know a few people here who would hardly agree, if they were around to say it.

His eyes rolled over to the empty seat, now void of that giant cousin of his, bid for a long ride north in what was basically the blink of an eye. With him, Wulfric had carried out the last of Rudolf's chance to offer his team a palatable alternative, a trade up by basically every measure—

Impulses he'd already warned some of them about, and even had questioned in response. He had every reason to be confident, by all rights, that he was just living in his own head when it came to the subject— hardly any ill will had come his way in recent weeks. Galahad, who knew the full¹ story now, had even rescinded basically all their prior tensions. He'd even bridged the gap, found some measure of common ground, in offering support.

Even so.

That man had felt like an escape hatch. Somebody who, if it all went to hell, Rudolf could have pointed at and said : "If you're not happy with me, just bring this guy along in my place. He's everything I am, but better, and he doesn't make mistakes."²

That had been half his courage... and he'd let it slip. It fit, in a way.

Wouldn't be you if there was an easy out, now would it?

He shoveled more food into his mouth, gathering what he had left of his ideas, now each a piled of shards at the feet of the crisis at hand. It was true. He'd have to do it the hard way, with the Kirins all stuck with him, and him stuck with however it changed the way they considered the strange young man they kept on board. Skael was shaping up to be a real shitshow, so, if he had to set a deadline...

With some effort, he brought his eyes up to share a mildly befuddled glance with Esben, as the earl took his leave. After learning that his family had been keeping up a charade to a rhyming tune with "the illness that had nearly killed him in infancy resurged" after his exile, the story developing into Rudolf being sent to a colder, crisper, and more isolated part of the world wasn't as big a shock as it could have been, per se. Cadmon did mention, deep in the text of their communications, that he had been working on a new arrangement. Knowing that much, the track was easy enough to follow to a point.

But for all the apparent familiarity the tall Skaeller held for the Viscount... he was just as lost as to what the man could have possibly "had" in store for either of them.

They both returned to their food, Esben following his countrywoman's input, but both silently agreeing that they'd just have to find out when they got there. For the rest, he did as he was bid, quietly shoveling down the tastes of...

"Home", he supposed.

————

The next day saw them set out in earnest early into the morning, with a short farewell at the castle gates to mark the Warriors' return to proper deployment. It had taken some fussing over the issue internally, but in the end Rudolf's childhood chocobo, Argo, had remained stabled in Castle Demet rather than joining the fresh flock at Goug's reins. It had been good to see him the day before, if only for a little while— but a warbird like him was hardly suited for ferrying freight, and he'd be an extra hungry mouth as they made tracks toward sparse frostlands³.

Close to noon, he saw the all-too-familiar pillar of stone crest the horizon in the distance— and felt an all-too-familiar pit sink, deep in the bottom of his stomach. Their timeline having sped up like this, their course south had now been charted to cut straight through the one place he had hoped to avoid entirely—

"I'll take the lead through this stretch. We'll want to get through the ruins as quick as we can, and I've spent more time in there than anyone reasonably should."

Lunaris. Not the Lunaris that was the clan Demet's seat of power, the city of the western reaches of Edren that offered lifesaving respite for many a traveller or trader— Old Lunaris. The ruins of the protoculture. An ancient, ancient Empire, so long-dead it barely survived in stone, story, and a select few traditions, however mangled they'd been by time⁴. He shouldered his way to the front, setting pace for a forced march. His tone sharpened and tensed, but any dissent that may have came fell on deaf ears— as far as he was concerned, he held the same authority as back in the days of playing armed escort to intrepid archaeologists.

Sagramori employment that seemed a lifetime ago, ever since the appearance of blightbeasts had upended every job board from here to the southern tip of solitude in a sellsword's line of work.

He carried that tense silence at the front, as the sun crept towards its midday zenith and the ruins gradually approached into the foreground. As the looming, moss-riddled stonework began to graduate into "surroundings", his eyes flicked to and fro, noting positions of the buildings, all dilapidated brick and column and fragmented terrace, of shadows, of the many branching passages that wound between the heavy stone walls. Nothing out of place, near as he could tell, but nonetheless...

"This is treacherous ground," he warned. "No matter what, the group sticks together while we pass through. Nobody breaks line of sight, nobody takes detours. It's more labrynthine than it looks from out where we are. Believe me. No good comes from chancing the depths."

He breathed in thickly. On his tongue, he tasted a nostalgic sweetness; on his nose, the inescapable, musty notes of old brickwork, low-hanging fog, creeping moss, and settled dust. The aura of abandoned earth permeated this place... and to his growing attunement to the aethereal, thanks to the second voice within him, a palpable, uneasy edge to that atmosphere. Heavy and foreboding it was, like the eyes of a large animal with a lot of sharp teeth upon him, or a stormcloud appearing over the horizon at sea.

"A proud people once lived here, so long ago that their empire had died out by the time 'Edren' was a concept, let alone a kingdom. Stricken by some great calamity— their disappearance swift, sudden, and total. In this city, at least... it could be said that it was wiped out in the span of a night, near as any archaeologist that's been here is able to tell."

He looked over his shoulder, as if to verify the positions and presence of everyone he had left the castle with that morning. "The truth, as it is whenever said civilization is helmed by such a city full of sorcerer-kings, astrologers, alchemists, and other such... boundary-pushing types, is no doubt messier."

His eyes seemed to pierce. In the shadows between his skin and his armor, obstinately donned for "until they were through the ruins", an almost mirthful bubble coiled, unknowable to any but Rudolf and his passenger. Old, fond memories, for one— a world-shattering event for another, a mistake that was likely never unmade.

"So if there's anything we all know about messy, sudden tragedies, it's that they leave behind ghosts. Old ghosts, that want nothing more than to lure you into what's left of their dominion— If you listen to anything I say today, let it be this: Heed no voice calling you anywhere but through. If you can't see who said it, don't you dare listen. Consider anything you hear that you can't place a lie. There are things down there that will absolutely twist you to their own ends if you're lucky, and if you aren't, you'll just outright disappear. They'll prey upon your base desires, upon your fears, upon your most painful and precious memories alike— all to get just a pound of your flesh." His words escaped him almost as a bitter growl, once you stripped away the unwavering command they carried.

He turned back to face the front, eyes falling to rest upon the central pillar, a singular column of verdigris that appeared to claw and rend the sky, cast as a talon in its slight lean. If one squinted at the wide field it sat within, they might believe a mighty ziggurat to have once surrounded the spire of aged bronze. They would be right to.⁵

Hell. He had practically given the game away, just in saying all that that way. May as well get right into the shit while it was the topic at hand...

"... I don't say any of this lightly. I haven't quite been forthright as I needed to be with you all." he began, neither stopping his march nor meeting the eyes of the others. "I know a lot of you have pieced this together, and I'm late in addressing it, but—"⁶

Belay that. We feel that. We should not feel that. Company we shouldn't have, right in front of us. Do NOT invoke the pact.

Feeling the raw, palpable spike of twisted aether, like a bee trapped inside the base of his skull, Rudolf cut his admission brutally short, holding a hand up and bringing their procession grinding to a halt behind him. His coppery eyes went wide and alert, as his other hand flew down to draw one of the curved blades at his hip. This was what the aethereally-attuned sensed whenever he invoked the blackflame. More than even a borrowed awareness from his hanger-on, Rudolf's instincts told him this, as the tall, evil scythe split the pooling shadows in front of him. It was a sensation that he would never have forgotten, only growing in strength as the tall, tenebrous jester revealed his full form and launched into a one-act of his own volition———

The same as when he had accepted his contract. there was no mistaking what they were in the presence of.⁷

Ferdiad. Really? It couldn't have been anyone else? It had to be this kitschy jester that's breaking the rules and manifesting? What next, do I finally get to see Danube's toes?

"Everyone into the daylight!" Rudolf bellowed, swiping his steel through the nearest wave of the sprouting, grasping arms, mind racing as he began to reverse-engineer a plan of action. "Even if he can follow us there, he'll be weaker in the midday sun than if we stray towards the gloom! He's attuned to primordial darkness— he'd love nothing more than to drag us into a lightless abyss below!"

You said his name before he did. You know this guy?

Regrettably. the demon within seemed to growl, the shadows below black steel coiling in distaste. More important than that, I know he shouldn't be anywhere close to being able to manage corporeal form.

"Miina!" Rudolf called, drawing his second blade as he flipped the visor of his new greathelm down, his voice more "metered" than truly "muffled". "Prep a Dispel! Treat him like Isolde treated us!"

Not my point, but worth a try— I wasn't kidding a second ago. If he's walking around, your precious Himstus, Imir, or Danube should be walking around. Let alone me. And last I checked, we don't have any pretty river maidens with dainty feet running around with dominion over our fates, now do we? Don't answer that, this is a function of rhetoric. I know there are creeks that run down this way and that you're lonely—

With a more forceful growl than usual⁸, the armored swordsman swung again, racing through what options he had yet to call for. "Your act is a few millennia out of date, clown!" he snarled, venom flickering on his tongue. "You'd rather let a tough crowd like us go until you've got new material— trust me!"

I'm all for provocations, but don't get off-message. Whatever's allowing him this concrete form, your world is going to be significantly better off by having Ferdiad dead, not by convincing him to 'beat it'. I want to make that clear.

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• _{1. Full-ish.}
• _{2. You're quieter. That's something. Less egotistical, too.}
• _{3. There's a lot more due emphasis to be put on "hungry", here. Judging from my host's reaction, he had no idea his Chocobo could have ever grown to terrorbird size like this— as if it doesn't make sense that him being the former scion of cavalrymen would naturally mean whatever dinosaur he inherited, provided ample nutrition, would make all "smallness" relative.}
• _{4. You know what the strangest one is? Sword dowries. That's extant exactly where you think it is these days, but they got it from right here. It was Lunarian Princesses that kicked the tradition off.}
• _{5. Massive, megalithic, majestic it was. The superlatives and alliteration, both my favorite literary tools, don't do the real thing justice. The crown jewel of our nation, the envy of the whole world, and a feat of architecture we thought would last a thousand years. To be fair, maybe it did. Down in the depths of the ruins, where things get nice and, subterranean, keeping track of years goes out the window past the first fourteen or so.}
• _{6. Hold on, hold on, what the fuck is that? "Raising terror level"? Why?}
• _{7. Far and away, even with the necessary admission that we're both demons, this is the most distaste I've ever felt for anything said in relation to me for the past century. And I've been privy to every impulse you've had that said "characterize our deal like you were misled in some way", too. But this I won't laugh off. Fuck you. Do not lump me in with this stupid prick.}
• _{8. Well, that stung, didn't it? Here's hoping that we do a little better than "sting" when the small red cat tries to recreate that time some compromised asset broad lit most of my essence on fire without even really noticing.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

"Very cold, Miina."

So that was why he'd felt a familiar chill enter the room at the back of his neck, while he was too busy fuming over his barely-laid plans being scuttled— and in what felt like an instant, his protestations, his burgeoning courage, everything he had been trying to build to beneath the surface had ample cause to be quietly set aside for... some point later. What he had been hoping to say had to come soon, before the Kirins crossed the border if nothing else. If he entered Skael with those words still locked beneath his chest... well, now more than ever, he doubted he'd ever dredge them up.¹ Be it due to a faltering resolve, or this brand new crisis that the familiar blonde had brought to the table. He swirled the wine in his glass, a Crandori Red that for all the world tasted of spiced cherries and blood as it warmed the back of his throat in a long, calming pull.

"At least as cold as Osprey was warm, and that's before the wind. They say Skael's sharpest knives lie not in the hands of its warriors, but instead pass between drifts, pines, glaciers, cutting men unlucky enough to get caught in the gust to the bone."

His copper-coated eyes flicked between the Earl at the head of the table and the interloping spymaster, unable to fully keep the wary, brusque grimace out of their depths in spite of a growingly dismissive affectation, the type that he always wore when playing along with "knowing nothing of what he just heard". For many, the task would be easy on the latter front she mentioned, save her two subordinates. that'd be all well and good and expected.

But, in a twist of fate, Rudolf's case was... a little more complicated.

He cleared his throat.

"I doubt a SEED Director would embellish details like that if one were around, but I remember hearing a lot about Skael in my youth from when my 'Aunt Kayla' came by to visit when I was, what? Eight? I'm bound to get certain bits about the place turned around."

Given the circumstances, mentioning the old assumed identity off-handedly was just about all Rudolf could do to satisfy his urge to grill her about deceiving him back when he was still just a snot-nosed kid²— though hindsight was hardly kind to him, now that he had its benefits. A mysterious woman from the south that he'd only met once, and then primarily existed in their household as fuel for what were basically spooky stories to keep him and his brothers in line; to anybody that would ever stop and think about it once they'd grown up a little more, obviously "Aunt Kayla" was a questionable identity at best.

But they all had bigger fish to fry, now. His indignation and surprise wouldn't just be unbecoming, they'd be downright obstructive.³

They were bound to have their fill of obstructions before they knew it.

He speared a roast potato with a fork, eyeing her, trying to make a mental note of all the questions he had burning at the back of his head that weren't immediately helpful before filtering out the ones that were. Why she knew Cadmon and his father. How long she had been at this habit of dropping in that none of the servants seemed particularly ruffled by her sudden ingress from the boundaries. So on.

He let the breezy indulgence in the bit fall from his face.

"... Speaking of Wind, then: Would we be correct to presume that because Solitude is our only mode of access to the temple, there's no necessary way you're able to tell if the Crystal is compromised as well? Beyond the presumable chaos it would throw the elements into, despoiling of the land, and so on— no direct observation, just praying we don't see those consequential symptoms?"

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• _{1. Nothing ever happens.}
• _{2. Do I even need to say it, audience?}
• _{3. Hypocritical as well. Moreso, even— Director Lambert here was telling a child a white lie so as to not reveal to him any of the grisly details of her true profession, to keep both of their lives out of danger— whereas my charming and rock-brained host is just having a fight with dear old Dad, and stealing valor from a warrior-shaman culture he's only spent half a decade LARPing as.}